Extended Battery/ Getting better battery life?

[froggyman]

I, like most people around here, wish that the LG optimus V had better battery life. Right now I'm running Zefies CM7 ROM, but would not be opposed to switching to get better battery life.

Also, I would like to get an extended battery so I could actually make it through a full day without being tethered to a wall.

 

[mmarz]

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but have you read this: http://forum.androidcentral.com/optimus-v/71693-optimizing-battery-drain-optimus-v.html

 

[froggyman]

Hmm.. Very interesting thread. I think I may end up switching to Rodimus and see how that compares.

 

[mmarz]

Hmm.. Very interesting thread. I think I may end up switching to Rodimus and see how that compares.

Or you can try leaving your phone on 3G if you have Wifi at home. The CM7 roms use up a lot of power when on Wifi.

 

[Bigtuna00]

I think it's completely unfair to blame the phone for your ROMs poor battery performance. I for one am perfectly happy with getting 24 to 48 hours on the stock ROM. I'd prefer the ROM developers fix the issues rather than throw an extended battery at the problem.

EDIT: of course it's fair that 24 to 48 hours may not be acceptable to you; it'd be good to specify what is acceptable.

 

[Eollie]

Froggy I dont believe there is a extended battery for these phones yet.
There are many options in helping extend the battery via simple apps and /or just turning off certain functions of the phone.

 

[froggyman]

Well, the thing is I am usually only getting 10-11 hours on this, with moderate usage. I think I may try to make some better profiles in setCPU and see what that does.

I would love to be able to get through a full day. That is perfectly acceptable to me, since I can always just charge my phone overnight.

 

[dEris]

I switched to Rodimus after using both Zeffie and AOSP's CM7 and I get AWESOME battery life with Rodimus!

 

[JerryScript]

I think it's completely unfair to blame the phone for your ROMs poor battery performance. I for one am perfectly happy with getting 24 to 48 hours on the stock ROM. I'd prefer the ROM developers fix the issues rather than throw an extended battery at the problem.

EDIT: of course it's fair that 24 to 48 hours may not be acceptable to you; it'd be good to specify what is acceptable.

48 hours on any ROM, including stock, would be a record I believe. Mind sharing your settings?

 

[maxpower49]

Or you can try leaving your phone on 3G if you have Wifi at home. The CM7 roms use up a lot of power when on Wifi.

I haven't done all of the scientfic testing that you have, but i know i get much better battery life with wifi than 3G. I have wy wifi sleeppolicy set to 'never'.

 

[mmarz]

I haven't done all of the scientfic testing that you have, but i know i get much better battery life with wifi than 3G. I have wy wifi sleeppolicy set to 'never'.

Well, are you using a CM7 rom? Do you have anything that constantly uses data? Do you use your phone heavily? My testing was for standby with no data traffic and no apps running. If you have the 50% bug, that might be causing battery drain when on 3G. There are a lot of variables at play. After tuning my phone, (Rodimus, no 50% TWS, always on 3G, no syncing but sipdroid is on, removed most google apps that phone home constantly, no weather updates, no news updates, no im client constantly connected) I am getting an estimated battery life of 100 hours on standby. I have gotten 3 days on light use. I also don't have any power management apps or anything really that constantly runs in the background. While you may think those apps can help, if they are constantly waking your phone up to check how things are, they may drain more battery than they save.

If you read the follow up posts in my thread, you'll see that I do agree that Wifi could be better if you are a heavy data user. But it varies greatly based on how fast your 3G connection is vs how fast your wifi is. So your mileage might vary.

But if you get your phone to a point where you find the battery life acceptable, then forget what anyone says about tweaks and apps. Just enjoy the phone. If leaving it on wifi works for you, then great!

 

[hchen42]

For battery extender, Monoprice sells something that you plug into the usb port. They were on sale last week for less than $7, now back to $8.96.

FWIW, I also use stock ROM. Wifi is friendlier to me. I don't have much running in the background besides sipdroid and antivirus. On a moderate use (10 minutes call, checking mail every 60 minutes or so), I could make it through the whole weekend and still have about 30% of batteries left. If I turn on 3G, then I am sure to recharge within 36 hours.

 

[Bigtuna00]

48 hours on any ROM, including stock, would be a record I believe. Mind sharing your settings?

Happy to provide anything you'd like to see. Let me know. I can say it's not much, here's what I did when I bought my Mom a V:

• Set Wifi sleep policy to never.
• Install Advanced Task Killer and kill Where and Twidroid. I kill Twidroid simple because it's not used. However WHERE is bad for the battery. I do not use auto-kill because these WHERE only seems to relaunch on a phone reboot.
• Make sure Wifi is configured for her home network.
• Install the "Network" app because of the time without signal issue (this doesn't fix the issue, just provides a convenient way to work around it).
• EDIT: forgot one: Make sure Google Talk is not running (<- VERY important).

I also removed pretty much every stock widget but that's not for battery savings, just because most of it is junk.

I want to be clear that I leave *everything* on:

• GPS on
• Bluetooth on
• Wifi on
• 3G/cell on
• Sync on

EDIT: on the other hand I am very diligent about disabling/killing/uninstalling apps that try to run in the background when I don't want them too. The official Twitter client is one example: I had it set to never update anything and it still insisted on running in the background so I uninstalled it. I use aCar, but I have the notifications disabled (don't need them). Stuff like that.

I'm using Simi clock for my clock+weather widget, it seems to do well.

I'm also on wifi a good part of the day (work and home) and I think that contributes to my excellent battery life. I'm also probably in the "low usage" category in terms of all smart phone users. I'd love to post screen shots of my "time since unplugged" but I'm not going to root just so I can do that Anything else you want to know, just say ask.

 

[Eollie]

I dunno about you guys but everytime I see somebody using advanced task killer I cringe. What is wrong with the one built into the os? Earlier Iwas playing Angry Birds needed to check something and didnt exit the app. Remembered about 5 minutes later and it had been killed by the built in app killer.

 

[markmarkmark]

I dunno about you guys but everytime I see somebody using advanced task killer I cringe. What is wrong with the one built into the os? Earlier Iwas playing Angry Birds needed to check something and didnt exit the app. Remembered about 5 minutes later and it had been killed by the built in app killer.

every app should have an exit button. i like having manual control over what apps are running. android doesn't know better than me. i don't like the apple model where you trust the system to take care of you while you amuse yourself with the pretty icons. if i want gmail to shutoff even if it is in the middle of sending my email, then it better listen to me and send the email some other time. and what if you didn't want angry birds to by killed? what if you wanted it paused until you got back? what if you needed that extra 5 mins of battery life and needed angry birds killed right away? </end rant>

 

[Eollie]

every app should have an exit button. i like having manual control over what apps are running. android doesn't know better than me. i don't like the apple model where you trust the system to take care of you while you amuse yourself with the pretty icons. if i want gmail to shutoff even if it is in the middle of sending my email, then it better listen to me and send the email some other time. and what if you didn't want angry birds to by killed? what if you wanted it paused until you got back? what if you needed that extra 5 mins of battery life and needed angry birds killed right away? </end rant>

...really?
All apps if exited via the back button will stop once you back out to the home screen. If I had needed angry birds killed right away I would not have forgot it was running and stopped it.

Again the built in task killer is all you need.
You can access it by selecting settings/applications/manage applications.
Or to create a homescreen shortcut

long press the screen/select shortcut/settings/manage applications.

Again no reason to have a third party app to kill your stuff.
If they are running all the time that is just another battery drain.

ETA:markmarkmark you know in time android learns what you use and dont use. And then will shut down apps if you dont have them focused for a short period of time. Its part of its smart learning.

 

[Bigtuna00]

I dunno about you guys but everytime I see somebody using advanced task killer I cringe. What is wrong with the one built into the os? Earlier Iwas playing Angry Birds needed to check something and didnt exit the app. Remembered about 5 minutes later and it had been killed by the built in app killer.

The one built into the takes more clicks to get to and has a less intuitive UI. ATK is more convenient.

 

[Bigtuna00]

...really?
All apps if exited via the back button will stop once you back out to the home screen.

This is false.

If I had needed angry birds killed right away I would not have forgot it was running and stopped it.

We're all glad you can remember everything. Some of us are a bit older and tend to forget

Again the built in task killer is all you need.

No, it's not. It may be all *you* need, but it's not all *I* need.

Again no reason to have a third party app to kill your stuff.

You mean there's no reason for *you* to have a third-party app. Some of us might have our own reasons to use one.

 

[Eollie]

This is false.



We're all glad you can remember everything. Some of us are a bit older and tend to forget



No, it's not. It may be all *you* need, but it's not all *I* need.



You mean there's no reason for *you* to have a third-party app. Some of us might have our own reasons to use one.

..no I mean its all you really need for killing apps.
Advanced task killer migh have other things packaged with it that are useful.
But as a app killer it is all you need.

Im not some young pup, I bet I forget just as often as you. But again if I needed it killed immediately I would have. Its not hard to pause and back out. I also can long press the back button and kill a app. That is a feature of CM/gingerbread.

No if you back out of all apps via the back button it will stop them. The apps that run in the background arent running the full version just some processes. Again this is a feature of android system. If you close a app via the back button it tells the os to shut it down. The app might have code that says restart the (insert function here) every .003ms but the full app is not running. Dont believe me check your running apps via the android manage apps function.

 

[Bigtuna00]

..no I mean its all you really need for killing apps.
Advanced task killer migh have other things packaged with it that are useful.
But as a app killer it is all you need.

No, it isn't. Stop for a moment and listen to me. I realize you have an opinion. So do I. Mine is different that yours. The point isn't that I'm right, nor that you are right. The fact is they are both opinions and neither is "right".

No if you back out of all apps via the back button it will stop them. The apps that run in the background arent running the full version just some processes.

That doesn't mean they aren't consuming battery. Why should I leave WHERE running if I *never* use it?

Again this is a feature of android system. If you close a app via the back button it tells the os to shut it down.

That's not how it works at all. Read here:

Android Developers Blog: Multitasking the Android Way

Furthermore the behavior of the back button can be over-ridden by the developer. Each and every app can have a different behavior (they shouldn't, of course, but they can).